Atmosphere:
El Amanecer is located right in the heart of St Paul’s District del
Sol, at the intersection of Cesar Chavez St and State St. The
restaurant is divided into two dining rooms, both with tables and
booths. The main dining room has beautiful, brightly colored murals
painted all over it’s walls. There is also a large, gorgeous handmade
Mexican Mosaic in the dining area when you first walk in.

El Amanecer has a variety of Bottled Softdrinks including Jarritos and Mexican Coke.

Price guide: Breakfast $6-8 Combo Plates $9 Entrees $9-13 Seafood $7-17What I ordered:
I had the three-taco plate and I tried three different meat with the
tortillas prepared three different ways. Pictured here in the left is
the Res (shredded beef) on fried corn tortilla. This taco was packed
full of mildly flavored shredded beef. The meat wasn’t too exciting
but the shell was nice and crispy. Next taco was chicken
in a fried flour tortilla. It had a ton of tender, shredded white meat
chicken that was only lightly
seasoned. The tortilla was small and very thin and was not fried long
enough so it wasn’t very
crispy. The last taco was asada served on the traditional double corn
tortillas. The tiny bites of steak were very tasty and tender, my
favorite of the three meats I tried. The corn tortillas were pretty
good. I had the homemade salsa on all three tacos, which gave the
tacos a little bit more flavor with the tomato and cilantro in it, but
it was still only slightly spicier than most mild salsas.

I
think I enjoyed the beans and rice more than I did the tacos! The rice
was very flavorful, slightly dry but very soft. The refried beans were
also very good and had a nice consistency- not too thick, not too thin.

Service: Very nice and friendly, happy to make substitutions on the menu. My take-out order took about 10-15 minutes.Overall Impression:
Glad I was finally able to try El Amanecer. The tacos were decent, but
I would like to explore more of the menu on my next visit. Wish they
had a bar with margaritas!

7 Responses to “El Amanecer Restaurant ~ St Paul, MN”

The taco was too spicy according to my wife who is from Argentina. However, there they are used to eat very little spices, so that was no wonder then. Otherwise, I liked the food, the beer was perfect, not too cold :-)

I have eaten breakfast at El Amanecer a couple of times and enjoy their Huevos Divorciados a lot. Yesterday I happened by at 10 AM and was starving. They had just opened the lunch buffet. Rice, Beans, posole, menudo, caldo de res, Mussles in a piquant tomatoe broth, beef steak in a verde sauce, Green beef enchiladas, red chili chicken ones, pork in a red chili sauce…. It was all fantastic. It included a soft drink and flan… for $9.50…. I give it a 9 out of ten. I cant wait to have it again. Especially the mussles… They were incredible.

Went down to initially eat at Boca Chic but too long a wait. Never tried Boca Chica by the way. We tried El Amanacer. There were no customers in the place which should have tipped us off, raised red flags. I believe the lady who sat us down also cooked the food. She took forever to take our order, and it took even longer to actually receive our food. She never refilled our cups. We asked for more chips and thought it would be obvious that we would need more salsa, but she only brought the chips. When we asked for more chips she looked kind of annoyed, so we didn’t want to try for more salsa.. When my partner asked if he could substitute an enchilada for a taco she, the waitress, said no. And suggested we try another combo. The music was tooooo loud. The food portions were small but tasty. My partner ordered fajitas which sadly came with only two shrimp. :) He asked for some spicier salsa to go with his chips and she brought a little plastic container of salsa. It takes a lot for me to want to leave a restaurant without receiving the main course but I actually wanted to leave after we drank our Horchatas.

Overall we wont go back and don’t think they will stay in business much longer.

Oh wow you are making my mouth water!!!! I wish that we had such food here in South Africa, but unfortunately we don’t have that part of out culture,and we have to just rely on cooking books or overseas holidays to get the taste of Mexico!!!!!!! Thanks for the great review that place sounds awesome!!!!

This restaurant would better be called ‘Necromancer’ – the food is terrible and the service awful – I have eaten there twice; the first was bad and a month later the service, food quality and general filth level was worse. I went the second time only because I thought the first was a ‘bad day’ as experienced by all restaurants – not true – this is a ‘bad restaurant’!

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